A biased look at psychology in the world

November 16, 2009

Encephalon 78

A hearty welcome to the 78th edition of Encephalon, the bi-monthly showcase for the best in brain and mind blogging. I have been a long-time fan of this carnival and it's a pleasure for me to host it this time around. There is a full roster of fascinating posts to cover so let's get started...

First up is Ionian Enchantment with a two-part entry on the visual assessment of formidability that can be found here and here. We learn that being able to size up an opponent quickly is a survival trait (I learned that in grade school).

Next we have Brain Blogger giving us two separate posts. The first post is on the cognitive impairments that are often seen in patients who have undergone major surgery, especially older patients. The second post focuses on the evolutionary history of depression. Is it always a disease or can it have adaptive value?

Brain Stimulant tells us about a radical new research program using robots to model specialized neurological processes.

Then we come to Neurocritic with two posts. The first post is on the newest fad of genomarketing, i.e., do our genes shape our buying choices? The post weighs in on the pros and con. The second post deals with some very unusual case studies in sexology and the brain.

I weigh in with a modest contribution about a tragic case of dementia pugilistica in a professional boxer who couldn't bring himself to quit.

Then we have the intrepid Mo from Neurophilosophy who gives us two posts. The first post recaps some fascinating research into the Cocktail Party effect and the problems dyslexic children face in making sense from noise. The second post deals with the Phantom Limb syndrome and the bizarre form it can take in some patients.

Our final contributor is Sandeep from The Mouse Trap who gives us three posts. His first post is an addendum to his recent series on IQ, SES and heritability. While "know thyself" is an ancient bit of advice that never goes out of date, how many different ways are there to do it? According to this post about Ulric Neisser, at least five. Then we come to the third post that deals with the epigenetics of autism and how it may relate to schizophrenia.

That's it for this time. We're still looking for a host for the next
edition, so if you're a neuro/psychology blogger and you'd like to be
the next Encephalon editor, please email encephalon dot host at gmail dot com.